unfortunately i didn't save a cave render, but maybe i'll redo that. just make huge fake stones with pancake above 1.5 and apply heavy displacement via the redirect shader. then it should be easy to find a cave out there

It might be old for some, but I'm finding there's a lot more than discovery and I'm perhaps slower than some at that. A lot of things can be done. Check my contribution with the Fake Stones. I learned scads from Volker about texturing and have found it's endless what I can do and learn so far.

the problem with this trick to fake caves is that you have to decide whether you want detailed surfaces inside the cave or if you want it to look great from outside. what i tried now was taking two fake stone shaders, both with individual redirection, after that another redirect shader with bigger displacement. still good surface inside, from the outside, well, still too much like fake stones i think, but you have to be careful about the last redirect shaders displacement, or your cave will be gone.

only low quality renders, sorry about that, but i was doing something else when i looked up this thread again, and i promised a cave so here it is, still very basic

child@play, how did you figure out how to do this TGD? I'm looking at your terrain and wondering how you calculated your XYZ coordinates for your first Redirect Shader and I have no idea how you came to these conclusions. Would you be willing to explain at least the first node?

well, i started putting the two fake stone shaders in place, then i was looking for a spot that almost formed an arch anyways. everything else was a bit of experimenting, getting the scales right etc. i experimented a lot with the redirect shader before, so it was easy to get what i wanted. no calculations, pure luck, as always

pancake effect of the fake stones is the thing you want to follow with your displacement (to say it like yoda )

cheers...

perfection is not when there's nothing more to add, it's reached when nothing more can be left out